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| September 09, 2009
For Immediate Release |
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| Press Contacts: Peepul PR Gayatri Hingorani-Dewan: gayatri@mypeepul.com / 917.346.0551 NEW YORK, NY The Lark Play Development Center and Indo-American Arts Council are proud announce playwright Rehana Mirza as the 2009-10 South Asian Diaspora Playwright-in-Residence. The formal presentation of the award will take place at the final celebration event of Playwright’s Week on October 4. As the 2009-10 recipient Mirza will receive a $1,000 cash award from the IAAC, support from the Lark for the year as she develops new work through roundtable readings, and a public reading at the end of the year. After the fellowship, Mirza will be eligible for Lark’s alumni programswhich provide long term support. According to Lark Artistic Program Director Megan Monaghan, “This award identifies and supports extraordinary playwrights from the South Asian diaspora in the New York City metro area, in order to expand the body of work that illustrates the many diverse experiences and interests of South Asian Americans.” Mirza is the founder and Artistic Director of Desipina Productions, a company focusing in film and theatre, which is dedicated to promoting cross-pollinations of artistic, political, and cultural dialogues. About this opportunity Mirza says, “There are millions of reasons out there to stop being a playwright. But the one reason I keep at it is for the love of telling a story that wouldn't (or couldn't) get told by anyone else. For the next year, I'll have a second reason: a place for the story to be heard, and an artistic community to help shape it. This fellowship is coming at just the right time, as I've been constantly hoping for that extra push that can better connect me to my work, and that can connect others to it.” For more information about the Lark Play Development Center and the South Asian Diaspora Playwright-In-Residence Award, please visit: www.larktheatre.org. For more information about Indo-American Arts Council, please visit: www.iaac.usRehana Mirza: MFA: Playwriting, Columbia University; BFA: Dramatic Writing, New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. Rehana’s full-length plays have been produced/developed at: Asian American Theater Company (San Francisco), Arena Stages (Los Angeles), Studio Space @ Theater Row, HERE Arts Center, Rasik Arts (Toronto), and Asian American Arts Centre (Philadelphia). Her short plays have been presented at the Culture Project, EST, The Flea, Center Stage NY, The Tenement Museum, Richmond Shepard Theater, Artwallah (Los Angeles), CSV Center (2G), and Abrons Arts Center. Her play, BARRIERS, was published with the Alexander Street Press, and was on the theater curriculum at Berkeley, West Virginia University, and Yale University. Her short plays have also been published with the Alexander Street Press as well as in The New York Theater Review, with Blue Box Productions Best of Sticky Series. She is a Leopold Schepp Scholar, a resident member of Ma-Yi Theater’s Writer’s Lab, as well as the recipient of an EST/Sloan Commission, LMCC artist grant, John Golden Award, and TCG Future Leaders mentorship with New Georges/Susan Bernfield. Rehana is the founder and Artistic Director of Desipina Productions. She is also the filmmaker of the award winning short film, Modern Day Arranged Marriage, which has played in over 40 festivals and the feature film, Hiding Divya, with Madhur Jaffrey, Pooja Kumar and Deep Katdare. A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson, and Artistic Program Megan Monaghan. For more information, www.larktheatre.org. INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL is a registered 501(c) 3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America. The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. IAAC works cooperatively with colleagues around the United States to broaden our collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. IAAC’s focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India to exhibit, perform and produce their works here. For more information, www.iaac.us. |
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